This invention concerns fire protection, particularly inhibiting the spread of fires in high-rise buildings, also in other buildings.
Over the last several years, there have been a series of fires in Dubai and surrounding Emirate high-rise buildings, as well as in England, where the buildings had aluminum and combustible foam composite clad panels as the exterior finish. Fires have started from both the interior and exterior sides of the building.
The combustible aluminum (or other metal) faced cladding panels are a primary source of the problem, in that the fire quickly heats the panel, which in turn ignites the interior combustible polyurethane foam insulation and other type of foam insulations. This process results in a fire that spreads rapidly up the building's exterior wall surface; possibly entering the interior of other units, through the heat fractured exterior side of glass windows exposed to the fire or from open, fire damaged cladding panel joints.
The interior fire spread is attributable to two independent conditions: (1) a fire originating inside a unit resulting in flashover, which in turn, blows out exterior wall windows; whereby, the interior fire's resultant “blow torch” type flame exits the now open window area and ignites the exterior cladding; and (2) exterior cladding fires entering the interior of the building through either a broken window or open, fire damaged cladding panel joints and spreads into and throughout the unit, and possibly into interior utility chase areas.
There are two parts that need to be addressed in order to provide a solution to the problem: one is to address the exterior portion of the fire issue, and the second is to address the interior portion of the fire issue.
1. Exterior Fires                Heat from an exposure fire on exterior insulated cladding panels will quickly result in ignition of the combustible foam insulation within the sandwiched panel.        The fire generated by the ignited foam will travel upward along the exterior surface of the building, as well as migrate into the interiors of units, through blown-out exterior windows or open, fire damaged cladding panel joints exposed to the fire. These cladding fires are hard to extinguish, due to all of the potential access areas that exist during a fire that expose typically concealed combustible insulation into which the fire can penetrate.        Furthermore, once the fire starts, it becomes unstoppable, as the combustible foam fuel source essentially becomes one solid mass across the entire width and height of the building, due to the construction features of the cladding-combustible polyurethane foam insulation material, and other types of foam insulation materials exposed along all four sides, while sandwiched (front & back) between thin-gauge aluminum panels.        